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13 December
* Contains spoilers *
Gone with the Wind (1939), seen on Monday night, has been digitally restored, but still runs to 233 minutes...
One thing that one has to get over is its great nostalgia for The South as it was before the Civil War, because that meant slavery, however nice the O'Hara family was to its slaves. Another is that The United States were still segregated at the time of the film's making, as films like Michael Roemer's Nothing But a Man (1964) make clear.
Kitty Scarlett O'Hara, Gerald O'Hara's (Thomas Mitchell's) most winning daughter, is of course played by Vivien Leigh, who would have been around 25 at the time (and only lived until 53) - naturally, an accomplished piece of acting, however old she was supposed to be at the opening of the film, though, much as we might admire O'Hara, we can rarely like her. Leslie Howard, as Ashley Wilkes and about whom she was besotted, was (because of the war) to live to a similar age to Leigh, but was much Leigh's senior at around 45 at the time of filming.
(Such things would commonly matter much more now, as if these were times of greater verisimilitude... A long-shot of Tara, with the building so obviously painted in, or a red sky, supposed to be Atlanta burning, but clearly just a back-drop, is not, though, our modern expectation.)
One of the most striking things about the film, other than O'Hara's steadfast regard for Wilkes, is Max Steiner's music, which underpins so much of the action in a non-distracting way, but, when it wants to bring back the big themes of The South or of the family homestead Tara, does so unmistakably, and weaves in tunes such as Dixie.
Olivia de Havilland was wonderful in the digital restoration of Gone with the Wind (1939) at @CamPicturehouse - complete with intermission.
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 9, 2013
Clark Gable (Rhett Butler) is one of the treasures of the film (38 at the time of filming), and with whom there necessarily is such chemistry with Leigh, believing that she might love him when he knows that (through having overheard, right at the beginning) all that is on her mind is Wilkes, and her carelessly losing two husbands before marrying Butler. The other is Olivia de Havilland's non-judgemental performance as Ashley Wilkes' cousin and wife Melanie, loving Butler and O'Hara much more than they can ever love her.
Rather meanly, O'Hara characterizes Butler, after seeing him for the first time at the ball at Seven Oaks, as 'able to see through my shimmy [sc. chemise] as if I weren't wearing it', which raises the issue of his licentiousness from the start - as if, in her own way, O'Hara were any less licentious, as time progresses, willingly dancing with Butler, although in mourning, at the fund-raising ball in Atlanta for The Confederate Southern Army shortly afterwards, where she has chosen to be because Wilkes will return there on leave.
With Melanie's death, apart from the disconcerting, famous lines, the film is but at an end, except for whether Scarlett will descend into her father's condition, or rise up to win back Rhett by going back to Tara (which she fought for, and then forgot about).
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
